Eruditus Education Pvt. Ltd, which offers executive learning programmes globally, has raised Rs 16 crore ($2.3 million) in venture debt from InnoVen Capital.
InnoVen is the venture debt arm of Singapore state investment firm Temasek.
In a statement, Mumbai-based Eruditus said it will use the money to boost its expansion plans in international markets such as Latin America and Southeast Asia.
“We expect to enrol 30,000 students in our courses this year, a 300% growth from last year,†said Ashwin Damera, one of the co-founders of Eruditus.
Eruditus was founded in 2010 by INSEAD graduate Chaitanya Kalipatnapu and Harvard Business School alumnus Damera.
Kalipatnapu had previously worked with Sun Microsystems. Damera, a chartered accountant, was in the past associated with Citibank and had also founded travel website Travelguru.com.
Eruditus offers customised and open business programmes in India, Singapore, Dubai, among other locations. It collaborates with experts from business schools such as MIT Sloan, INSEAD and Wharton to deliver its programmes, which take place in the form of workshops, modular sessions, and online courses.
Eruditus, which had earlier raised equity funding from Bertelsmann India in its Series B round, currently offers 28 courses such as data science and fintech and plans to increase this number to 52 by next year.
The company’s corporate clientele includes Deustche Bank, Microsoft, Altisource, HSBC, Vodafone, Accenture, and Asian Paints.
Eruditus had posted net sales of Rs 28.4 crore in the financial year 2016-17, up from Rs 6.8 crore the year before that, as per the company’s filings with Registrar of Companies (RoC). Its financials for 2017-18 have not yet been made public.
In 2015, Temasek and Singapore-based lender UOB acquired Nasdaq-listed diversified financial services company SVB Financial Group’s specialty finance business focussed on venture debt. SVB India Finance was then renamed as InnoVen Capital Group.
The venture debt firm usually writes cheques at the post-Series A stage, but it mentors early-stage startups as well.
Last September, Nasdaq-listed Yatra Online, Inc., which runs travel portal Yatra.com, raised $15.4 million (Rs 100 crore) from InnoVen in the largest- ever venture debt deal funded by a firm in India.
InnoVen’s other portfolio companies include Oyo Rooms, Swiggy, Byju’s, Nestaway, Pepperfry, Prizm Payments, Shaadi.com, Shopclues, and Myntra, among others.
Last year, the venture debt firm disbursed $75 million (about Rs 477 crore) and committed another $10 million.
